25.5: Summary

Last updated
Save as PDF

Page ID: 89324

\( \newcommand{\vecs}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } \) \( \newcommand{\vecd}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash {#1}}} \)\(\newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\) \( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\) \( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\) \( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\) \( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\) \( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\) \( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\) \( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\) \( \newcommand{\inner}[2]{\langle #1, #2 \rangle}\) \( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\) \(\newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\) \( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\) \( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\) \( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\) \( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\) \( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\) \( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\) \( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\) \( \newcommand{\inner}[2]{\langle #1, #2 \rangle}\) \( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\)\(\newcommand{\AA}{\unicode[.8,0]{x212B}}\)

“Teachers are expected to reach unattainable goals with inadequate tools. The miracle is that at times they accomplish this impossible task”. – Dr. Haim G. Ginot (Ramsey, 2006, p. 96)

In this chapter, we have presented three tools that, while technologically advanced, are still being perfected. Both blogs and wikis are specific software applications, while digital stories rely on a combination of software and hardware. These tools will not do everything that you need them to do, but that may be mainly because what we need them to do changes so rapidly.

In reviewing this chapter, a profitable way to examine it is to view the contents as a possible path that students might take to negotiate an online learning environment. Following the chapter on learner identity, we see learners establishing online identities and then learning to interact with other students, noting the problems and possibilities as we introduce various activities, from responding to and creating narratives in the form of storytelling, to creating their own personal narratives through the use of blogs. We also see learners beginning to collaborate with other students to create repositories of knowledge through wikis.

In all this, the educator stands as a guide on the side rather than a sage on the stage, setting up appropriate scaffolds to support learners, trying to minimize the number of dead-ends that learners encounter, and guiding them beyond those that they do. To do this, educators have to embrace learners’ perspectives, in effect, becoming learners themselves. In this sense, students, by going through the process, teach teachers. In all of this, learners and teachers alike ideally are all engaged in and committed to building and continuously renewing communities of practice, the subject of Chapter 30, Supporting E-learning through Communities of Practice.

Before reading on, we urge you to spare a moment to reflect on the speed at which our notions of online environments change. For instance, in Beatty’s fairly recent (2003) book on educational technologies for language learning, technologies such as wikis and blogs, central foci of this chapter, receive no mention. The coming years will no doubt see the arrival of new technologies, some of which may supplant those in use today. While we forefront specific technologies in this chapter, we hope that readers will continue to reflect on the underlying themes of engagement, identity, narrative, communication, cooperation, and collaboration, which remain important whatever tools and techniques we choose to use.